General News
ANCO Moves to Save Courier Industry from Unhealthy Practices
Members of the Association of Nigeria Courier Operators (ANCO) recently, took to the Eleguishi Beach located in Lekki, Lagos, to ponder on issues concerning postal and courier industry in Nigeria, many of which are unhealthy to the sector.
At the a-day retreat covered exclusively by Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, some industry practitioners received thumb-down for negligence on the operational rules of engagement, while ANCO vowed to collaborate with the Federal Government through the Courier Regulatory Department (CRD) of NIPOST to ensure the industry is purged of inadequacies.
Declaring the retreat open, Mr. Siyanbola Oladapo, national president of the Association, said that ANCO executives in agreement with the members deemed it necessary to relax in a serene environment and thinker on how matters concerning the industry can be addressed.
He said they needed an environment devoid of Lagos metropolis “noises” and interferences to mediate on identifiable cases.
What are these cases? He identified some of issues that demand urgent attention to include non-adherence to pricing regulations, unhealthy marketing, independent regulator, and quackery.
On pricing, the Oladapo said, “We are not just the people advocating for strict adherence to minimum price in the industry. Even the registrars and the CRD have urged operators to maintain this stand. CRD came up with the benchmark which we advice every player in the industry to adhere to”.
Nodding in agreement, Ms Lara Okuneye, vice president of ANCO said, “In a relaxed environment, you will be able to discuss freely with your colleagues. One of such issues is pricing. Some people go out there because they do not know what they want; they are just anxious about getting contract. During the process, they end up cutting corners. We want to rebrand the industry. Let them know that this industry is driven my integrity and competence. If you know you are of a royal blood, you wouldn’t behave like a street urchin”.
She alluded to Oladapo’s position that necessitated the retreat, thus, “We came out here to put heads together and muster courage to confront certain issues bedeviling the industry. This is actually the peak of our operations, but people are tensed up. We want them to be relaxed. In other words, we do not want to lose anybody. In doing that, we get to know each other and there are salient points we want to discuss”.
In same light, Imasuen Olajumoke, managing director of Ran Parcel Services limited told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that, “Presently, we are not enjoying any uniform rate, even though it is there. Courier Regulatory Department (CRD) gave out these rates. Professionally, every courier firm should adhere to the rates. In my company, if we are deliver a parcel for you from Lagos to Maiduguri within 48 hours, N3,500 is the minimum charge. So, the industry needs an enforcement of regulatory rates.
“For ANCO, we can do a lot for the industry by emphasizing that we need to work as a team. The need for us to expand has come”.
Angered by the unceasing unhealthy marketing, scheming and gimmicks coupled with backstabbing, Mr. Okey Ubah, secretary general of ANCO, said that, a situation companies goes at the back to re-negotiate contracts already awarded to another firm, especially without superior and competitive edge, implies that some players are out to ruin others businesses.
“A situation where you have a contract to deliver parcels and as you cannot cover everywhere, it will require you network with your colleagues; the person goes behind to slander you before the client in other to take the advantage.
“Instead, bring up superior argument on why you should be allowed to carry out the delivery, as against such practices of backbiting.
“Secondly, when you expose your industry to the pushes of economic constraints, and that comes mainly from greenhorns, they do not ask how to get the job or channels of delivery. At the end, they will be constrained on how to carry out the delivery.
“When a job that should cost about N10, because someone is desperate for the venture he goes to negotiate for N5. At the end, he might not be able to deliver, dumps it or goes back for re-negotiation. By that, you are running yourself and the industry down. That is aggressive marketing, unnecessary scheming and inordinate marketing that is bad. In the mean time, you may think that is smartness, but it backfires”.
Oladapo slammed operators who cheapen themselves and berated others who have refused to abide by the rules, especially by registering with NIPOST.
He said, “If you are a professional, you have to abide by the principle, ethics, and rules guiding the profession. Companies tend to underrate the operators due to the economic outlook of the nation. Why some of the operators cause it themselves by disregarding the federal government’s pricing guides. We are saying, although there is no upper limit, but there should be a lower limit. We are trying to enforce it that the industry, might grow.
“It is another way to checkmate quackery: who are given to cutting corners. We have to make difference in the way the society perceives and treats us. We are interested in upholding the objectives, to promote the industry, ‘sanitize’ it and ensure that those who are not part of the reform are not been patronized by the innocent members of the public. There will be sanctions hence we are ready to work with the federal Government through the CRD to achieve the purpose”.
ANCO scribe also questioned the rationale behind some quoted companies that deliberately refuse to hold annual general meetings or print annual reports for their shareholders.
This attitude, he said, has led to hardship on the part of registrars and courier operators who are part of the value chain in the distribution and dispatch of the annual report.
Ubah said, “It shows the general decadence in the society. When you talk about registrars, it is not solely under their purview for annual reports to be printed for shareholders. It involves company secretaries, shareholders association, registrars, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). Should any of them compromise it affects others in the chain. The job of the registrars is to ensure the reports are distributed involving the courier firms.
“They do not even have the right to decide the quantity of reports to be printed. Primarily, the shareholders ought to react when their annual reports are not printed; send queries to SEC when they do not print the actual number of annual reports. When companies engage in such shoddy acts, it affects the registrars resources; by implication the courier companies have to downsize, . as breadwinners lose their jobs, people must survive in one way or the others, therefore, crime becomes thrives in the society. It is not advisable for companies to continue to surchange the system through that dubious means. Every shareholder is entitled to an annual report, whether in attendance during the meeting or not.
“The essence of the report is for them to diagnose the company’s performances and determine if to continue investing or otherwise. Such action is illegal and malicious. It has to be taken care of, because it affects businesses and the economy”.
They were agreed that these issues could be things in the past should the Federal Government deliver on its promise to give the industry an independent regulator.
Also speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, Ranti Shobande, ANCO’s Financial Secretary, said, “We were happy when we heard that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the moves for the Postal Commission Bill; we thought in a short while the nine (9) years lingering issue will be resolved.
“However, we have not heard from them again; besides, the office of the vice president is expected fine-tune the Bill. Look at a country like Ghana; there is no way you can compare postal sector in Nigeria to Ghana’s industry. Why the foot-dragging? I am beginning to believe vested interests are bent on killing the morale of the operators. But how long shall this continue?
Olajumoke agreed with Shobande’s postulation, adding that, “Countries that understand the positive impact of the postal & courier sector on the economy do not play politics with the sector. Even though they have embraced the internet and its courses, it has not deterred them from appreciating why the postal should be given a face-lift. They deliberately allowed the postal industry operations.
“Apart from the fact not everybody can operate the internet; these countries understand that people who work there should be protected. Outside Nigeria, postal industry receives a lot of attentions and assistance from the government. Until we appreciate that the best way to help this industry is to enact a law for the establishment of an independent body, then we might just be walking about a circle”.
Meanwhile, Mr. Toyin Adeojo, publicity secretary of the Association, said that, on the interim, the Federal Government should provide CRD with necessary tools to aid her operations; hence the industry must be sanitized before the country could reap from its numerous potentials.
—
PalmPay, Nigeria’s leading digital banking platform, has renewed its commitment to deepening financial inclusion across the country. At the CeBIH Annual Conference 2025, themed “Reimagining Financial Inclusion through Cultural Shifts in Consumer Credit,” PalmPay’s Managing Director, Chika Nwosu, urged industry players to deepen financial inclusion by embracing community-aligned solutions and customer-centric innovations that can better serve Nigeria’s underserved and unbanked populations.
Speaking during a panel session titled “Social Inclusion, A Veritable Tool for Financial Inclusion,” Chika Nwosu joined other industry leaders to share insights on strengthening participation among women, rural dwellers, low-income earners, and other financially excluded groups.
Chika Nwosu highlighted PalmPay’s commitment to inclusive finance through its 500,000-strong agent network, which enables seamless cash-in/cash-out services for unbanked users across Nigeria. He also emphasised the importance of PalmPay’s USSD platform, 861#, which allows users with basic phones or limited internet access to perform essential financial transactions.
“Financial inclusion goes beyond access; it must be equitable and tailored to real-life needs,” Chika Nwosu said. He shared how PalmPay leverages behavioural insights to design impactful services, including affordable health insurance, reliable bill payments, merchant solutions, and automated savings features that support financial discipline among users.
The session further examined the role of grassroots agents and community touchpoints in driving last-mile adoption. Chika Nwosu noted that PalmPay’s widespread community presence continues to build trust and encourage excluded populations to embrace digital financial tools.
The session was moderated by Ronke Kuye of the CeBIH Advisory Council and featured representatives from E-Doc Online, SmartCash Payment Service Bank, SANEF, and EFINA.
PalmPay reaffirmed its commitment to driving accessible, secure, and inclusive financial services for all Nigerians. PalmPay is a leading digital banking platform driving financial inclusion and economic empowerment in underserved emerging markets. Through its secure, user-friendly, and inclusive suite of financial services, PalmPay empowers individuals and businesses with tools to manage and grow their money.
PalmPay offers a comprehensive range of products, including mobile payments, savings, and micro-insurance via its app and mobile money agent network.
Since launching in Nigeria in 2019 under a Mobile Money Operator license, the platform has grown to over 35 million app users. PalmPay has operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, and Bangladesh.
Reality Defender and 1Kosmos have announced a strategic partnership that will see the deepfake detection firm integrate its real-time deepfake defenses into 1Kosmos’ blockchain-based biometric authentication platform.
Deepfake
A release says the integration enhances the platform’s existing PAD capabilities with new signals on both live and pre-recorded AI-generated image and video impersonations: “multimodal deepfake detection” that “enhances ISO/IEC 30107-3 PAD Level 2 performance to counter the growing share of synthetic-media attacks.”
“Deepfake attacks are evolving faster than most organizations can adapt, and detecting them requires specialized, continuously updated models,” says Ben Colman, CEO of Reality Defender. Reality Defender’s models keep pace with regulatory changes like the EU AI Act and upcoming ISO 25456 standards, to ensure seamless compliance.
“Advances in AI-generated impersonations are rewriting the rules of identity assurance and ratcheting up fraud losses,” says Mike Engle, chief strategy officer for 1Kosmos. “By adding Reality Defender as an embedded detection layer, we’re enabling enterprises to verify identity with greater certainty and stop AI-driven impersonation attacks before they result in financial loss, brand damage, or regulatory consequences.”
The product deploys without friction, integrating natively into existing 1Kosmos workflows, identity stacks, and user experiences with no new licenses, retraining or rearchitecture.
Resemble AI heads straight to market with new funding
Resemble AI has raised 13 million dollars in strategic funding to accelerate development on its voice generation and deepfake detection products. An announcement says the investment round includes Google’s AI Future Fund, Okta Ventures, Taiwania Capital, Gentree Fund, IAG Capital Partners, Berkeley Frontier Fund and KDDI – partnerships, the firm says, that “create immediate paths to market distribution and embed our technology within key identity and security ecosystems.”
The company says its deepfake detection model achieves 98 percent accuracy across more than 40 languages with multimodal threat detection across audio, video, images and text, and enhanced explainability for content analysis. It intends to use the investment to “fuel our global expansion and accelerate the development of our AI detection platform.”
FARx releases new multimodal deepfake detection tool
FARx, which bills itself as “the world’s only fused-biometrics company,” has announced the launch of FARx 2.0, its new generation of biometric software which fuses speaker, speech and face recognition for added capabilities in synthetic and cloned voice detection. The software can be integrated into browsers, apps and communication systems, and operates in the background to provide continuous multi-factor authentication without disruption.
A post on the firm’s LinkedIn page says FARx 2.0 “identifies not just what is being said but who is speaking, enabling it to detect and block attempts to spoof someone’s identity using synthetic voices, deepfakes, or cloned audio and video.” Trained on some 55,000 synthetic voices from real telephony environments, it can “reliably distinguish between real and AI-generated voices.”
The Malvern Gazette quotes Clive Summerfield, CEO of the Worcestershire, UK-based firm, who says the new product aims to deliver “an even more sophisticated, flexible biometric multi-factor authentication technology to users across a broad range of industries and applications.”
“Legacy voice biometrics and traditional MFA systems are simply no longer enough to outsmart the new era of AI-powered threats.”
The launch follows a recent investment of 250,000 pounds (about US$337,00) through the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).
Grant funds deepfake tool tailored to South Korea, Singapore
A team from Singapore Management University (SMU) has won a grant to develop a deepfake detection tool. A release says the project will be “the first multilingual deepfake data set that includes dialectal variants such as Singlish and Korean dialects.”
“Many existing tools don’t perform well on Asian languages, accents, or content,” says Professor He Shengfeng, who leads the team. “We’re focused on building something that fits the specific needs of our region.”
Understanding different linguistic, socio-cultural and environmental characteristics was a key requirement for the grant, which comes from AI Singapore (AISG) and South Korea’s Institute for Information & Communication Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP).
The team has dubbed its tool DeepShield, which its proposal paper calls “the first unified interpretable detection system capable of handling diverse and multi-modal manipulations – including object insertions, lighting alterations, background swaps, and voice dubbing – within a single, explainable pipeline.”
Overall, DeepShield wants to position itself as “not merely a detection tool, but a next-generation AI governance layer for digital media integrity – setting it apart from commercial offerings in both ambition and design.” The ultimate goal is a spin-off startup that He imagines licensing services such as deepfake forensics, media authenticity verification, enterprise compliance and digital governance to public and private enterprise.
Work commences in January 2026 with the scouring of large-scale, publicly available datasets such as the YouTube8M dataset.
Ant International’s winning deepfake detector looks to eliminate bias
Ant International has won first place at the NeurIPS Competition of Fairness in AI Face Detection. A release from the company says its entry trumped over 2,100 submissions from 162 teams globally.
The deepfake detection contest challenged participants to develop AI models that “not only achieve high-utility performance but also demonstrate fairness across demographic subgroups such as gender, age, and skin tone.”
“A biased AI is an insecure AI,” says Dr. Tianyi Zhang, general manager of risk management and cybersecurity at Ant International. “Our model’s fairness prevents exploitation from deepfakes and ensures reliable identity verification for all users, supporting our mission to deliver secure and inclusive financial services worldwide.”
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) is set to develop a comprehensive security master plan for tertiary institutions nationwide.
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT), TETFund, Aminu Bello Masari, made this known during his remark at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop on campus security towards the development of a security master plan for tertiary institutions in Nigeria, held in Abuja.
He outlined the various threats faced by tertiary institutions, including banditry, kidnapping and cyber intrusions.
Masari explained that the master plan aims to enhance threat prevention, detection and response capabilities.
According to him, the discussion at the workshop, which was attended by all the chief security officers of all tertiary institutions, will cover various aspects of campus security, including intelligence gathering and emergency response mechanisms.
He stressed the shared responsibility of campus security among government, security agencies, administrators, students, staff and communities.
The workshop is described as a critical national document that will shape campus security policies and operations.
He encouraged participants to approach the deliberations with dedication, innovation and practical solutions, adding that outcomes of the workshop will significantly impact the safety of campuses and the future of Nigerian tertiary education.
The participants, including chief executives, deans, security officers, and law enforcement representatives, were encouraged to share experiences and practical solutions to ensure robust, future-proof campus security.
“What we begin here today is not merely another conference. It is a foundational step in developing a comprehensive, forward looking security master plan for tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
“This master plan is expected to establish a security of time framework for all time sharing institutions to transcend institutional capacity for threat prevention, detection, mitigation and response, promote intelligence-led security operations and proactive risk management, protect students, staff, facilities, infrastructure and intellectual assets, deepen collaboration between institutions, security agencies and host communities institutionalized emergency preparedness, crisis management and business continuity protocols and integrate modern, physical and digital security technologies into campus operation.
“These deliberations are not theoretical. They form the building blocks of the national framework that will guide campus security policies, investments and operations for years to come. I am particularly encouraged by this diversity of participants. Present here are chief executives, Dean of Student Affairs, chief security officers, ICT professionals, security analysts and the representatives of law enforcement agencies,” he stated.
In his remarks, the Executive Secretary, TETFund, Sunny Echono, pointed out that some campuses are porous and easily invaded, making them attractive targets for criminals.
He recalled a previous mapping exercise to identify high-risk areas and establish emergency response mechanisms.
He said there is a need to interface with various agencies and units in case of a security breach, ensuring clear communication channels.
Echono stressed the importance of having clear communication channels to alert and respond to security breaches, involving agencies like the military, police and Civil Defence.
“Those high-risk areas we identified and see how you can have some emergency response mechanism. This is only the first layer that is there, at the security layer at the source. Naturally, you know you have to interface with so many other agencies and units in the events of such an occurrence,” he said.
Ecobank Nigeria to Fully Repay $300m Eurobond Ahead of Schedule
PalmPay MD Seeks Deeper Financial Inclusion @ CeBIH Annual Conference 2025
Airtel Africa Foundation Opens Undergraduate Scholarship Portal in Nigeria
YouTube Nigeria Unveils 2025’s Top Lists and Launches New YouTube Recap Feature
Reps Give Banks Four-Day Ultimatum on Tax Deductions, Charges
Kaspersky Introduces Cyber Pathways to Support Career Development in Cybersecurity
NITDA DG Tasks Youths to Drive Africa’s Digital Transformation
Firm Urges Organizations to Check Protection of their Websites Amid Search Engine Optimisation Attack Schemes
Hackers Breach Phones of Dangote and Otedola, Demand Ransom
FCCPC Sets Deadline for Digital Lending Regulatory Compliance
Telecom3 days agoNigeria Dominates 2025 TikTok Sub-Saharan Africa Awards with Six Wins
E-Financial3 days agoFG, SEC, NGX Group Agree on Capital Gains Tax Reform
E-Business3 days agoReport Reveals Half of 2025’s Compromised Passwords were Already Leaked
Broadcasting3 days agoEFCC Arik Case: Witness Testifies on Receiver Manager Nominee’s Role in NG Eagle Shareholding
E-Financial2 days agoCBN Rejigs Financial Inclusion Strategy to Boost Economic Growth
E-Financial3 days agoA Nation on Alert: Is FIRS’ Xpress Payments Move Consolidating a Revenue Cartel?
Telecom3 days agoAirtel Africa Foundation Celebrates International Volunteer Day, Honours Employee Volunteers
E-Business3 days agoUBA Wins Africa’s Bank of the Year for Third Time in Five Years